Obese people being saved by firefighters soars by a third

September 19, 2016

There were 944 incidents where obese people needed help in 2015/16
But this figure was an increase on the 709 reported cases in 2012/13
The figures were collected from all 50 fire and rescue services in the UK
Rescuers sometimes had to remove windows, walls and banisters in homes

Stephen Matthews For Mailonline

Published:
03:15 EST, 19 September 2016

|
Updated:
03:37 EST, 19 September 2016

e-mail

View
comments

The number of obese people who need to be moved by firefighters is on the rise, new figures show.

Data obtained by BBC Radio 5 shows there were 944 incidents where people needed help in 2015/16, up a third on the 709 in 2012/13.

The figures were collected from all 50 fire and rescue services in the UK.

Cases included helping the ambulance service to remove an ‘extremely large’ patient who had been stuck on the sofa for days and carrying a 40-stone man from the upstairs of a pub.

Rescuers often used lifting equipment, special slings and sometimes had to remove windows, walls and banisters, frequently in people’s homes.

There were 944 incidents where obese people needed help from firefighters in 2015/16, up a third from 2012/13, new figures collected from all 50 fire and rescue services in the UK show

A number of incidents involved moving obese people who had died from their homes to an undertaker’s ambulance.

South Wales Fire and Rescue Service had the highest number of incidents at 77, while Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service had 46.

Humberside Fire and Rescue Service had 45, London Fire Brigade had 38 and Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Service had 37.

The tooth fairies! British scientists invent tooth fillings…

Cancer patients claim they are being refused life-saving…

Dicing with death: Just 1 in 5 students has vital meningitis…

Want to shine in bed, chaps? Stand in front of bright light…

Chris Jones, watch manager from South Wales Fire and Rescue Service, told the BBC some of the rescues were very complicated.

He said: ‘Some of these incidents have become protracted overnight while we’ve needed to change certain elements to the building to make that rescue safe before we can bring the patient out.

‘If we are doing what we call an external rescue where we’re taking the patient out through a window, quite commonly we’ll remove the window frame itself and we will actually sometimes drop courses of brickwork down to create that space.

Rescuers often used lifting equipment, special slings and sometimes had to remove windows, walls and banisters, frequently in people’s homes

‘Internally we might have to take doors off, move furniture – we may even have to put supporting systems into the house to make sure everything’s structurally sound, as well.’

Dr David Kerrigan, one of the UK’s leading bariatric surgeons, said patients who become that big ‘are prisoners, not just within their own body but within their own home’.

ARE FAT PEOPLE LESS INTELLIGENT?

Fat people are less intelligent than people with a normal weight, a provocative study claims.

Overweight men and women have less grey and white matter in key areas of the brain.

They also have greater impulsivity and ‘altered reward processing’, the study said.

Researchers from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, said their findings could explain why overweight people make poor diet choices – they do not have the mental capacity to control themselves.

He told the BBC: ‘The bigger and bigger they get, the less confident they feel about engaging with the outside world.

‘They are big users of the internet – so they don’t even go out to shop any more and do a lot of their socialising using social media, and they just become more and more trapped.’

Tam Fry, from the charity National Obesity Forum, said the figures were on the increase because the obese were getting bigger.

He said: ‘This is not about more people being obese. This is about those who are already obese now getting to a size where they now need assistance.’

But Mr Fry said the figure could be a lot higher.

He added: ‘Senior doctors I speak to say there are many people who don’t leave their homes so they don’t even put themselves in a position where they may need to be rescued.

‘They are scared of being seen in public.’

In 2012, a new category was created for the fire and rescue services to report ‘bariatric rescues’ involving obese patients.